So if you are in Europe and want a drinking straw, you need to hop on a plane and go to Switzerland or (one day) Britain. But you won’t be able to eat on the plane because, for security reasons, only plastic cutlery has to be used. Bugger! Finger food and drinking from the bottle/can.

But let’s not kid ourselves. What will plastic cutlery and straws be replaced with? Paper straws and wooden cutlery. And how do you make them? By cutting down trees.

But trees are carbon sinks in the war against climate change so that means this proposed ban will lead to an increase in European carbon emissions.

Sacré bleu! But the Paris Climate Accords. What about those? In addition to the new plastic remediation department within the European Commission. There will also need to be a new adverse effects of new plastic remediation program department. A 1 billion Euro budget and 5,000 staff for both should suffice.

But also, the global climate cabal of bureaucrats, diplomats and carbon carpetbaggers will have to have another conference. Fuel up those high carbon emitting private jets and reserve those first class airfares. Where is nice this time of year?

But that’s alright. According to European Commission estimates:

these rules, once fully implemented in 2030, could cost businesses over €3 billion ($3.5 billion) per year. But they could also save consumers about €6.5 billion ($7.6 billion) per year, create 30,000 jobs, and avoid €22 billion ($25.6 billion) in environmental damage and cleanup costs.

Very amusing but sadly all too real. The Brits know which way is up. Brexit – get out while you can!

Next the greens will issuing bibs so that when we eat food with our fingers we do not soil our clothes. How nice. But what will they be made of? Better yet, let’s live in caves so that we do not damage the environment.

This is sadly the infantilisation and the anti-intellectualism promulgated by the power pundits.

these rules, once fully implemented in 2030, could cost businesses over €3 billion ($3.5 billion) per year. But they could also save consumers about €6.5 billion ($7.6 billion) per year, create 30,000 jobs, and avoid €22 billion ($25.6 billion) in environmental damage and cleanup costs.

So it will create 30,000 jobs, but result in net savings of € 25.5 billion.

Well it must be true or the EU bureaucrats would never have said it.

If only we could think of a few more brilliant technological innovations like this one.

Britain has already announced the ban. Latest report on plastics says 90% of ocean plastics come from 10 third world rivers. But it is the western world that is again being targeted. Another way of damaging western economies.

No one mentions the UN MARPOL requirement that only recently has been changed requiring large ships to grind up their waste before sea disposal. Any guess as to where all these small bits of plastic come from?

Quite passable disposable and longer life cutlery made from bamboo, a member of the grass family, is already available in Australia and globally – examples, matched with cardboard plates, came with upmarket two-course meals at a wine & food festival I attended a couple of weeks back.

Cotton buds need not have plastic stems: alternatives include timber, cardboard and bamboo.

I know of no alternative to the plastic drinking straw, but is it really necessary?

Plastic swizzle sticks are, again, able to be readily replaced by timber or bamboo.

The 30,000 jobs will be public servants policing the new laws paid by the working taxpayers.
Read where burning wood is subsidised in the UK , for every 100 you slender buying wood the pollies give you 160 of taxpayers money ,no responsible gangrene will abuse this will they ? The ulster government paid out so hush in refunds they’re are even more broke than usual .
Just shows when lunatics are running things you end up with lunacy.

The reason they ‘need’ to regulate is because they consider ordinary people are making the wrong choices. It would seem people prefer plastic.

So our betters will decide how we spend out money.

I suppose it is all part of the mindset: They don’t see their citizens as having any business making choices about how they spend money; Whether they they force us to pay for the approved cutlery, or they take the money as tax and pay for the approved cutlery.

Brexit is only a virtue if the opportunity is used to create a rights protecting government, not a local version of Brussels.
Since no one knows what the former even means and since the latter is what the Brits are getting then there is no virtue of Brexit.

Just like ‘renewable energy’, that all sounds awesome. Of course, if it really truly was wanted by people and was genuinely competitive on cost, then I wonder why you’d need to spend a fortune of tax money on legislation, regulatory authorities, enforcement and compliance? If it really is the case that ‘the trend is away from plastic’, wouldn’t it be genuinely silly to not simply let the free market simply sort it out by itself?

Or could it possibly be that this is really all about carpetbagging after all?

It just the next step,
Eat with your right hand.
Next no toilet paper. ( to save the environment of course)
Then beards ( so not need for shaving equipment, for the environment)
Then cloaks for all ( black for women to cover everything – then no make up, not extra clothes and white for men with a cloth for head, to save the environment)
……. I think you get the idea.

This will make no difference to the oceans as over 90% of plastic comes from the third world rivers which will not be affected by this measure. But don’t let that stop you. EU Commissioners can enact law (it’s not the parliament’s job) based on little or no research. They then say that this is OK because they do the cost benefit study/review to check on any new regulation 10 years after they have implemented it.

Note that this nonsense was supported by a TIME magazine cover picture of a sea horse holding a cotton bud. Photoshopped of course.

Note that this nonsense was supported by a TIME magazine cover picture of a sea horse holding a cotton bud. Photoshopped of course.

The camera doesn’t lie.
Nor does Time magazine.
The REAL issue here is just what the seahorse was doing with that cottonbud.
Was it an ecofriendly cottonbud?
Was the seahorse licenced to carry the cottonbud openly?
Had the cottonbud been deactivated so it was no longer an assault cottonbud?
So many questions!

I was going to respond to the fvckwit enabler called Singleton Engineer, but my blood pressure is already high enough.

Here’s the thing:-
Life on this planet relies on the waste of other life.
Microbes rely on the waste of animals and vegetation (compost ,fvckwit).
Plants rely on animal waste (fertilizer, moron).
Trees lining heavy traffic roadways are always more lush than trees further away. Trees love what we call pollution (CO2, idiot).
Oil spills clean up naturally at astonishing speeds (astonishing to so called experts. Carbon is food, dick head).
Particular specific species (called politicians, bureaucrats, technocrats and other sundry hangers-on and carpetbaggers) flourish greatly at the waste of hard working citizens (taxation, cock head).

The blueprint was set at the Montreal Protocol where CFC’s were controlled to save the Ozone Layer donchano. That being wildly successful, then came CAGW to save the planet’s temperature. Next will be waterways and bodies of water (plastic in oceans to save turtles is a start).

All of this has to do with making laws and regulations at the UN level. Soon no national, state or local governments will be able to make laws independent of UN dictats. That’s what Brexit was all about ffs.
This has NOTHING…..NAH…..THING to do with pollution or the environment. The environment is fine, it’s the people who are fucked. (h/t George Carlin).

You’ve jumped the shark on this one.
The plastics Industry has been taking the money and running ever since it started, now the Oceans are full of the shit. Time for it to be taxed so as to bring the Industries it fucked over back into being.
Wax covered paper straws aren’t that long ago, neither are glass bottles, as recently as 30 years ago you could buy shoes with leather soles that were replaceable.
Try finding that now. Worn down sole, throw the shit in the bin, spend more dosh on more shit made in a Chinese sweatshop.

The regulations will have no effect. Eighty four percent of plastic in the oceans comes from Asia, most of it from China. The balance, or nearly all of it, comes from Africa. Only two percent comes from Europe and North America combined. It’s not a plastics problem, but a waste management problem. In countries without effective waste collection and disposal systems much of the waste ends up being washed into rivers and then carried out to sea. The EU could ban plastics altogether and still make no difference.